Turkey has the right to a decisive influence on Syrian peace talks due to start next week as the sheer number of refugees has made it the “second largest Syrian country in the world”, the Turkish prime minister has said.
Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is visiting London for talks with David Cameron, said it was unimaginable that the estimated 2.5 million refugees in the country would return if the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, remained in power beyond a transition period.
“No country has more to say on these peace talks than Turkey because 2.5 million Syrians are in Turkey,” he said. “It is for us now a domestic issue if there is no well-established peace in Syria. If Assad is sitting there in Damascus, no Syrian will go back.” All-party talks under UN auspices are due to start in Geneva next week, but there is increasing doubt about how substantive those talks will be and who will be permitted to take part. A briefing at the UN in New York in Monday underlined the hurdles, and invitations to the talks have been delayed.
Echoing the views of the official Syrian opposition, Davutoğlu insisted that the Kurdish Democratic Unionist party (PYD) could not join the opposition delegation at the talks, claiming it was complicit with the Assad regime.
“The PYD has not been a real opposition – there has been close co-ordination between the PYD and the regime,” he said.
The Russians have been calling for the Kurds to be represented, but Turkey has been locked in a decades-long battle to resist demands for Kurdish autonomy. The PYD is the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the US. Turkey has been fighting the PKK in its south-east since a ceasefire between the group and Ankara ended last year.
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